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The
New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have
been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case
with most other papers – its publication has been periodically
interrupted by labor actions. Since 1993, it has been owned
by media mogulRupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which had owned it
previously from 1976 to 1988 before being forced to sell it because
of government restrictions on the press. It is the sixth-largest
newspaper in the U.S. by circulation. Its editorial offices
are located at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, in New York
City, New
York.

Paper's history

The New York Post, established in 1801 as the New-York
Evening Post, describes itself as the nation's oldest
continuously published daily newspaper. The Hartford Courant, which
describes itself as the nation's oldest continuously published
newspaper, was founded in 1764 as a semi-weekly paper; it did not
begin publishing daily until 1836. The New Hampshire Gazette,
which has trademarked its claim of being The Nation's Oldest
Newspaper, was founded in 1756, also as a weekly. Moreover,
since the 1890s it has been published only for weekends.

Dorothy Schiff purchased the paper in
1939; her husband, George Backer, was
named editor and publisher. Her second editor (and third husband)
Ted Thackrey became co-publisher and
co-editor with Schiff in 1942, and recast the newspaper into its
current tabloid format. James
Wechsler became editor of the paper in 1949, running both the
news and the editorial pages; in 1961, he turned over the news
section to Paul Sann and remained as
editorial-page editor until 1980. Under Schiff's tenure the
Post was devoted to liberalism, supporting trade unions
and social welfare, and featured some of the most-popular
columnists of the time, such as Drew Pearson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Max Lerner, Murray
Kempton, Pete Hamill, and Eric Sevareid, in addition to theatre critic
Richard Watts, Jr. and BroadwaycolumnistEarl
Wilson. In 1976 the Post was bought by Rupert Murdoch for US$30 million. The
Post at this point was the only surviving afternoon daily
in New York City, but its circulation under Schiff had grown by
two-thirds.

The Murdoch years

Murdoch imported the sensationalist "tabloid journalism" style of
many of his Australian and British newspapers, such as The Sun (the highest selling daily
newspaper in the UK). This style was typified by the
Post's famous April 15, 1983, headline: HEADLESS BODY
IN TOPLESS BAR. In its 35th-anniversary edition, New York listed this as one of the
greatest headlines ever. The New York Magazine also has five other
post headlines in its "Greatest Tabloid Headlines" list.

Because of
the institution of federal regulations limiting mediacross-ownership after Murdoch's purchase of
WNYW-TV to launch the Fox Broadcasting Company, Murdoch
was forced to sell the paper for US$37.6 million in 1988 to
Peter S.Kalikow, a real-estatemagnate with no news experience. When
Kalikow declared bankruptcy in 1993, the
paper was temporarily managed by Steven Hoffenberg, a financier who later pled guilty to securitiesfraud;
and, for two weeks, by Abe
Hirschfeld, who made his fortune building parking garages.After
a staff revolt against the Hoffenberg-Hirschfeld partnership --
which included publication of an issue whose front page featured
the iconic masthead photo of Alexander Hamilton with a single tear
drop running down his cheek--The Post was repurchased in
1993 by Murdoch's News Corporation. This came about after numerous
political officials, including Democraticgovernor of New YorkMario Cuomo, persuaded the Federal Communications
Commission to grant Murdoch a permanent waiver from the
cross-ownership rules that had forced him to sell the paper five
years earlier. Without that FCC ruling, the paper would have shut
down. Under Murdoch's renewed direction, the paper continued its
conservative editorial viewpoint.

Website

In 1996, the Post launched an internet version of the paper nypost.com. The
original site included color photos and sections broken down into
News, Sports, Editorial, Gossip, Entertainment and Business. It
also had an archive for the past 7 days. Since then, it has been
redesigned a number of times — with the latest incarnation
launched on September 28, 2006. In 2005 the website implemented a registration requirement but
removed it in July 2006.

The current website also features continually updated breaking
news; entertainment, business, and sports blogs; links to
Page Six Magazine; photo
and video galleries; original Post videos; user-submitted
photos and comments; and streaming video for live events.

Highlights

The paper is well known for its sports
section, which has been praised for its comprehensiveness; it
begins on the back page, and among other coverage, contains columns
about sports in the media by Phil
Mushnick.

The best-known gossip section is "Page Six", created by the late James Brady and currently edited by Richard Johnson. February 2006 saw the debut of Page Six Magazine, distributed free inside the paper. In September 2007 it started to be distributed weekly in the Sunday edition of the paper. In January 2009, circulation for Page Six Magazine was cut to four times a year.

Sales

The daily circulation of the Post decreased in the final
years of the Schiff era from 700,000 in the late 1960s to
approximately 418,000. A resurgence during the 21st century
increased circulation to 724,748 in April 2007, achieved partly by
lowering the price from 50 cents to 25 cents. During October 2006
the Post for the first time passed its rival, the
Daily News, in
circulation. The Daily News has since regained the lead
over the Post. Since then, the Post has fallen to
about 500,000 in daily circulation.

One commentator has suggested that the Post cannot become
profitable as long as the competing Daily News survives,
and that Murdoch may be trying to force the Daily News to
fold or sell out.

The Post's website also has high traffic. According to
recent Nielson net ratings, the site ranks 8th in number of unique
visitors to online newspapers.

Recent headquarters

From 1926, the newspaper's main office was at 75 West Street. In
1967, Schiff bought 210 South Street, the former headquarters of
the New York Journal
American, which closed a year earlier. The building became an
instantly recognizable symbol for the Post. In 1995, then-owner
Rupert Murdoch relocated the Post to its present Midtown
headquarters at 1211 Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue).

Criticism

One of the paper's famous
headlines.

The Post has been criticized since the beginning of
Murdoch's ownership for what many consider its lurid headlines,
sensationalism, blatant advocacy and
conservative bias. In 1980, the Columbia Journalism Review
asserted that "the New York Post is no longer merely a
journalistic problem. It is a social problem – a force for
evil."

Perhaps
the most serious allegation against the Post is that it is
willing to contort its news coverage to suit the business needs of
Murdoch, in particular that the paper has avoided reporting
anything that is unflattering to the government of the People's
Republic of China. Murdoch has invested heavily in satellite television in China and wants to
maintain the favor of local media regulators.

Ian Spiegelman, a former reporter for the paper's Page Six gossip
column who had been fired by the paper in 2004, said in a statement
for a law suit against the paper that in 2001 he was ordered to
kill an item on Page Six about a Chinese diplomat and a strip club
because it would have "angered the Communist regime and endangered
Murdoch’s broadcast privileges."

Critics say that the Post allows its editorial positions
to shape its story selection and news coverage. But as the
Post executive editor, Steven D.Cuozzo, sees it, it was the Post
that "broke the elitist media stranglehold
on the national agenda."

According to a survey conducted by Pace
University in 2004, the Post was rated the
least-credible major news outlet in New York, and the only news
outlet to receive more responses calling it "not credible" than
credible (44% not credible to 39% credible).

In 1997 a national news story concerning Rebecca Sealfon's victory in the Scripps National Spelling Bee
circulated. Sealfon was sponsored by the Daily News. The
Post published a picture of her but altered the photograph
to remove the name of the Daily News as printed on a
placard she was wearing.

On
November 8, 2000, the Post printed "BUSH WINS!" in a huge
headline, although the presidential election remained in doubt
because of the recount
needed in Florida. Like the Post, many other
newspapers around the country published a similar headline after
the four major TV networks called the election for Bush.

On
March 10, 2004, the Post re-ran as a full-color page one
photograph, a photograph that had already been run three days
earlier in black and white on page 9, showing the 24-story suicide
plunge of a New York
University student, who had since been identified as
19-year-old Diana Chien, daughter of a prominent Silicon
Valley, California, businessman. Among criticisms levelled at
the Post was their having added a tightly cropped inset
photograph of Chien, a former high-school track athlete, depicting
her in mid-jump from an athletic meet, giving the false impression
that it was taken during her fatal act, despite the fact that she
had fallen face up.

On April 21, 2006, several Asian-American advocacy groups protested the
use of the headline "Wok This Way" for a Post article
about President Bush's meeting with the president of the People's
Republic of China.

On April 23, 2008, the Post ran a "Page Six" story
stating that there was a sex tape about to surface featuring
actor/stuntman Bam Margera and Lindsey
Hughes, fiancée of radio personality Gregg "Opie" Hughes, co-host of the
Opie and Anthony
Show. It also stated that Hughes was planning on taking
legal action to prevent the tape from running on the internet.
Hughes himself said adamantly that there was no sex tape and he had
never planned on taking any legal action against the phantom tape
from surfacing. Also, on April 24, 2008, Margera confirmed during a
phone-in to the Opie and Anthony Show that there was no
sex tape and he had never met Opie's fiancée in his life. The
Post printed a full retraction on May 5, 2008, after it
was revealed that Chaunce Hayden of Steppin' Out magazine had
supplied false information about the existence of the tape.

On February 18, 2009, the Post ran a cartoon by
Sean Delonas that depicted a white
police officer saying to another
white police officer who has just shot a chimpanzee on the street: "They'll have to find
someone else to write the next stimulus
bill." The cartoon referred the recent rampage of Travis, a former chimpanzee actor and
was criticized to be in bad taste primarily by making a reference
to the raciststereotype of African-Americans being portrayed as
non-human apes.The cartoon has been interpreted
by some to compare President Barack
Obama to a violent chimpanzee who promoted a stimulus bill that
was unpopular with many Republicans. Rights
activist Al Sharpton called the cartoon
"troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of
African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys." The
Post has defended itself by stating that the cartoon was
deliberately misinterpreted by its critics.

The Post and the Daily News often take potshots
at each other's work and accuracy, particularly in their respective
gossip-page items.

In certain editions of the February 14, 2007, newspaper, an article
referring to then-Senator Hillary
Clinton's support base for her 2008 presidential
run referred to then-Senator Obama as "Osama" (Bin Laden), the paper realized its error and
corrected it for the later editions and the website. The
Post noted the error and apologized in the February 15,
2007, edition. Earlier, on January 20, 2007, the Post
received some criticism for running a potentially misleading
headline, "'Osama' Mud Flies at Obama", for a story that discussed
rumors that then-Senator Obama had been raised as a Muslim and concealed it.

Fictional references

During his time on Saturday
Night Live in the early 1980s, Tim Kazurinsky often spoofed the
Post's outrageous headlines on "Weekend Update." For example, after Yuri Andropov died, Kazurinsky displayed
several front page mock-ups with headlines that the Post
might have carried. One such headline was "ANDRO-POOF!"

In the 2009 series "Royal Pains",
Boris makes a reference to Page Six after Hank saves a girl's life,
saying; "I don't need a Page Six sensation."

The Post explicitly takes the place of the
Bugle in the Daredevil film.

In the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada,
Miranda Priestly (played by
Meryl Streep) makes a reference to the
Post by telling her assistant Andie Sachs (played by
Anne Hathaway) that Murdoch
should cut her a check for all the papers she sells for him. She
later says "Another Divorce splashed across Page Six" in reference
to the "Page Six" gossip column.

A fictional paper, the New York Ledger,
clearly modeled on the Post, with similar layout and loud
tabloid style often appears on the television show Law & Order.

In the spy farce film Top
Secret!, one of the villain's henchmen is introduced as
"Klaus . . . a moron, who knows only what he reads
in the New York Post." Actor John Carney, a large man with a blank, rather
unintelligent-looking expression on his face, is seen holding a
copy of the Post bearing the headline "MANIAC STALKS
OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN."

Throughout the animated television series The Critic there is a running joke where
most headlines of the Post are connected, in some way, to
severed heads.

In the 1988 film Married to
the Mob, an FBI agent played by Oliver Platt holds up a newspaper to his
partner, played by Matthew Modine.
Although the paper is called the New York News, it is
otherwise a perfect match for the Post. The headline,
"HAMBURGER HOMICIDE", discusses a mob shootout at a fictional
fast-food chain called Burger World, in
which a boss played by Dean Stockwell
not only survived an attempted hit which killed his driver, but
also killed the opposing hitmen, including
the drive-thru attendant wearing the
chain's mascot clown uniform and makeup, leading to the line, "Some
clown just tried to kill me!"

In October 1984, a parody called "The Post New York Post" was
published, ostensibly the issue from the day after the start of
World War III. The front-page headline
was "KABOOM!" The subhead read, "Michael Jackson, 80 million others
dead."

In the television series Entourage, there have been
numerous occasions of the Post being seen.

In the 2003 film Phone
Booth, Stu Shepard (played by Colin Farrell), makes reference to "Page Six",
a gossip column in the Post.

In the television series Gossip
Girl, "Page Six" is referenced a number of times. Characters
Lily Van der Woodson and Rufus Humphrey's new relationship is
chronicled in a "Page Six" article. Character Serena Van der
Woodson is also seen about town in the pages of "Page Six".

In a 2009 episode of Rescue Me, a character expresses
concern over the safety of her son as a new firefighter after an
incident where a fire engine is taken on a brief joyride by a boy
suffering from cancer; the story appears on the cover of the
Post with the headline "Cancer Boy Smokes Bravest." The
lead character played by Denis Leary
dismisses the publicity, saying, "It's the New York Post,
all right?"

At the beginning of the 1990 film "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,"
numerous New Yorkers are seen reading the New York Post, which has
a headline on the sudden surge of crime in New York City.

In a 2006 episode of the NBC sitcom 30 Rock, it is briefly
shown that reading the Post is regarded as a "con" in a pros and
cons list written by Liz Lemon, the show's protagonist, about her
ex-boyfriend.

"CORRECTION", New York Post, February
15, 2007. Accessed June 5, 2008. "Due to an editing mistake, a
small number of copies of yesterday's Post carried a headline
referring to 'Osama' over a story about Sen. Barack Obama on Page
2. The Post regrets the error."

Further reading

Crittle, Simon. The Last Godfather: The Rise and Fall of
Joey Massino. New York: Berkley, 2006. ISBN 0425209393.

Felix, Antonia, and the editors of the New York Post. The
Post's New York: Celebrating 200 Years of New York City As Seen
Through the Pages and Pictures of the New York Post. New York:
HarperResource, 2001. ISBN 0066211352.